When You Can't
by Renebre
Summary: Longing. Love. Jealousy. Sirius. Warning: Might be offensive to some, due to swear words and some references..


AN: I know, I know, I've been writing way angsty "unrequited love" fics lately. This isn't different from the rest, in that it is an unrequited love fic as well. I don't think I've captured Sirius' tone, though. No, I _know _I haven't captured Sirius' tone. This is more the tone I think he had back in the Marauder days - he wasn't behaving; as per usual. Hopefully this fic will make you laugh and sigh. I quite like it, myself. And to everyone who reads my other fics, yes, this is interspersed with "Its Like That" and a brief reference to "Letting Her Go" - which, due to an uploading error, is also known as "Giving", which I have deleted. I hate clutter. I saved the reviews, though! To those who haven't read my other fics, you don't have to to get this story. One thing: Remus isn't gay - "Letting Her Go" - despite Sirius' thoughts. Another thing: I don't have anything against gay people. I think Dumbledore might be gay, and I think he's a hoot. And - God, these Author Notes are such a temptation to babble endlessly! I shut up now. Review it, please - I adore reviews.

Disclaimer: Characters and setting belong to JK Rowling.

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Everyone always thought I was in love with Lily. I always knew it, even when it was just a rumor, never said to my face, but whispered about amongst boys who were too lowly to even consider rising above merely fantasising about Lily. It didn't matter to me. I knew I wasn't in love with Lily, Lily knew it, and James knew it, and that was all that mattered. I had never been concerned with public opinion. An old English saying I adopted as my own, to the effect of "Anyone who spends their time talking about someone else is a jackass." 

In fact, I'd never been in love with anybody during my years at Hogwarts. There was far too much to do to think about girls too often. It seemed to me that my years at Hogwarts were unmarred with any wrinkle of unfortunate love affairs and filled with trying to get into as much trouble as possible. I knew Remus was the same as me, he hadn't even liked anyone during his years at Hogwarts. Not that I knew of, anyway. I once wondered if he was a homosexual, but only once. Werewolf, at that time, I could accept more readily than I accepted a gay friend. Not that I had - or have - anything against homosexuality. Well, maybe I did, then. Hell, I was a kid. I had many stupid prejudices.

Of course, I paid for my girl-free life at Hogwarts after I got out of Hogwarts. For the next five years I spent my time wenching around - do they still use that phrase nowadays? - drinking, and doing a few odd errands for The Old Man - as I referred to Dumbledore. Whenever he saw me - the times of which were at best, infrequent - he would look at me through those ridiculous half moon glasses with a look I supposed was meant to be piercing and reproving at once. That was probably why I saw him infrequently. The Old Man was all right, he just had a tendency to be over pious. I hated that, then.

In those days, after a hard night of wenching and drinking, I would spend the next evening recuperating at James'. James was as happy as a clam then. Why shouldn't he be? He had a gorgeous armful at night, and a good job in the day. When Lily told him she was pregnant, he was over the moon. He spent the night drinking me under the table. James could hold his booze, I'll say that for him. 

I liked their home, and the atmosphere of it; security, safety and love - although I wouldn't acknowledge the last one; the word "love" was equivalent to "fuck" to me. In fact, in my mind, all love was _was _fucking. Or at least, the part of my mind that was conscious and tried to kill off my conscience regularly. I even had the vague thought that I wanted to have that home one day. Well, not exactly _that _home. It's equivalent.

Whenever I went over, Lily would ask me what I had been up to the previous night - as if she didn't know; she was a cunning chick, that much I'll give her. I always made sure to give her the full story. In graphic detail. James would howl in laughter - he was married, happy as a clam, but that didn't mean he was mature yet - and Lily would clamp one hand over her belly - protecting her unborn child from the evil influence of my smutty words, and the other over her ear. Always her right ear. I didn't know why. I didn't particularly care to know. Then she would beg me to stop, which I would. Eventually. After that she would tell me to give up my motorcycle. I'd ask why. She'd tell me it was bound to kill me one day. James would laugh, and I'd laugh too. The routine never varied. 

When Harry was born, I was the first to see him. I was his godfather, after all. I gave him a hearty kiss and a pack of cigars, which I knew Lily would spirit away immediately with a shocked look on her face. She'd probably smoke them all herself, the sneaky devil. She'd tell James, and James would laugh. I never saw such a guy for laughing. 

Remus came to see Harry only once before Lily and James died. I told him to give Harry a bite and pass the werewolf curse on. Remus told me he'd bite me if I didn't shut up. I shut up. For a while. Then I asked him if he was gay. Remus tried to bite me then. I dodged and didn't come back till the day after.

I never saw Lily and James alive again. 

I don't like thinking of what happened then. I got shut up in Azkaban, is all anybody needs to know. I know the rest, and that is my torment.

I didn't see Harry again until he was - how old was he? - fourteen, I think. Maybe thirteen. It doesn't matter. Time became irrelevant to me. Well, I _wanted _time to become irrelevant to me. 

Especially when I caught sight of her. 

Most people will probably think of me as a depraved lecher. A pedophile. Hell, _I_ think of myself as a depraved lecher. But not really. Not when it comes to her. Because lust has nothing to do with it. All right, lust has a slight something to do with it. Maybe forty percent. 

All right.

Maybe I'm a pedophile.

But only around her.

But that has nothing to do with what I'm saying.

I fell in love with her.

Love at first sight. What a cliché.

But I'd never really understood it. 

Love at first sight. People always scoff at it, and say it's a physical attraction and not really love.

They're wrong.

Love at first sight is when you see someone, see the way they stand and the way walk, the way they move their lips, the expression in their eyes. It's seeing someone in a certain position, or a certain light, or a certain situation and being able to see that person in all the ways there could be if you spent the rest of your life with them. It's seeing someone and wanting to see them for the rest of your life. 

But it isn't something that can be described, except clumsily, at best.

Suffice it to say that I fell in love with her. And it's a love that isn't weaker or less potent than anyone else's just because I had never spoken to her at the time. I didn't have to. 

I began to watch her over the next few years. I saw her sometimes with Harry, and it was surprising the amount of jealousy I felt for my own _godson, _for God's sake. Yet intermingled with that was a tenderness I had never imagined I was capable of, even before I got slammed into Azkaban. A tenderness that almost hurt. I prayed for Harry not to hurt her, not to break her young heart. I, who hadn't prayed even during the worst times in Azkaban. It was as if all the love I had never given to anyone - well, any female - was finally emerging and pouring itself into my feelings for this young girl. For young she was, when compared to me. Twenty-two years of difference between us. I never told myself that they didn't matter. I never told myself that they did matter.

I watched as over the years she kept on loving Harry. Then finally she turned to Draco Malfoy. The jealousy intensified, but so did the love and longing. Then when Draco betrayed her with Pansy, - well, suffice it to say that that night I spent thinking of ways to castrate him as painfully as possible. 

I dreamed of her. She replaced my dreams about Azkaban.

When she got back with Draco, I was happy. I was as surprised as - well, as anyone else would have been had anyone actually known of the love I bore Ginny Weasley. I was happy because she was happy, even if I couldn't have her. Despite my jealousy, despite my frustration and anger that I could never be with her. Why did it have to be her? Couldn't it have been someone my own age, someone who could _be _with me?

Someone who loved me in return?

But I never wished that I was in love with someone else. That would have been a betrayal, and I would never betray her.

I dealt with the bitterness. I had learnt to.

I dealt with the love as well, and that was maybe harder to do.

Azkaban had taught me a lot.

Maybe we'll be together someday. I don't give up easily.

But I also never fought for anything.

Except to get out of Azkaban.

Maybe.

I think of the different men in Ginny's life as the seasons.

Summer for her father and brothers, for warmth and laughter and picnics.

Spring for Harry, and the idol he will always be to her. For Harry represents a new beginning, not only for her, but for everyone one who fights against Voldemort. 

Winter for Malfoy, his coolness and his aloofness.

And I dream that when the leaves fall and kiss the ground, when the wind sweeps sullenly across brown fields . . . that's when I'll come, and I'll take her hand and take her to a land where I'm as young as her, and Azkaban is something I never thought about.

A land I left long ago.


End file.
